Kevin O’Brien at his blog, Theater of the Word Incorporated referenced an article called “How The Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World” by David Wong.
The article talks about how becoming the best is not all that easy, and sometimes people think they will become the best and bet on it by buying lots of stuff on credit. Actually, that’s sort of the reason the Great Depression happened. It isn’t a new problem.
Generally, I think the whole “loser guy ends up winning in something against the odds (and some mean dudes) and gets the girl because he goes through a whole music video sequence of practice” idea is not realistic, and we know that.
But, we can feel good about a fictional story that portrays this, and Hollywood bets we will pay to see it.
Strangely enough, though, it seems like we can also feel good about not succeeding, despite good efforts. There is occasionally a movie like this, where the main character doesn’t win the event but wins the “virtue” award.
That’s very telling. In the end, virtue trumps a temporal win. There is something unsatisfying about temporal wins because they are just that: temporal. Ok, you won that game, but what about this one?
And bad music during the music video training sequence can hurt that win too.